I'm thinking of going vegan in February

any particular reason @Batman?

just cause

cool. Good that you are able. Being in the US was one of the reasons I stopped being vegetarian, bat that was a while ago

well, i eat meat at nearly every meal now

so i don't know how long i can keep it up

im also not going for technicalities (e.g. cheerios, which are technically not vegan due to some vitamin fortification)

Well you can take it to extremes. I used to refuse to wear leather, which made e.g. buying shoes quite tricky.

But I ate lots of cheese.

In fact my diet as a vegetarian was quite poor.

Yeah, its possible. though harder

But you seem prepared to cook stuff......I never really was. The most I would do was stick something in the oven

we'll see

cooking meat is easy

i dont do many just veg dishes

Arrrrggggg I bought a new laptop for daughter (out of her money, she trashed the pc I got her) and it only arrived 2 days ago, and I am having to sort out problems.

Looks like when she saw the message "do not turn off your computer", she turned off her computer.

I now have a Windows Update message saying that it is trying to back out some changes.

So today is going to be fun

why do you need to go vegan if you can just skip meat at every dish?

its just for the challenge i think

i need something to keep me occupied

aside from work

learn hebrew, buy chickens, start doing ballet

many good challenges around

I used to um and er. I got to the point where I was eating hardly any meat, but I would tell myself "I couldn't be a vegetarian"

until one day I realised I was a vegetraian

btw Hi @PeteH @Batman :)

hi @Rilakkuma are you done for the week?

very busy and we have first snow today

i teach Latvian in the embassy to Japanese grannies

takes much more time than it would be reasonable

That sounds interesting

I have just dropped daughter at school, it is cold and grey outside and I am tempted to go back to bed

Anything I need to do today can be done on my laptop and horizontal!

I have just seen that the tennis is on tv, so I may watch that for a while

its 3am and i cant sleep

I hate that

so im reading mit tech review

have you been to Thailand guys?

and you still can't sleep?

@Batman just close PC and mr. sleep will come :)

also you can read the book called "dragon book"

very good book on how complers work

No @Rilakkuma I think the furthest east I have been is Greece, and the furthest west Washington, DC

but normally you fall asleep in 2-3 pages, not more

i did take a compilers class in undergrad, @Rilakkuma. that book doesn't put me to sleep. =|

oh dear

(I did my bachelors+masters in electrical engineering)

that's wild thing for undergrad

but well, good enough

so at the end of your study, will you be Dr @Batman?

yep

hoepfully anyway

cool. But doesn't really help with sleep.

we are thinking to go for a holiday in February

Singapore looks like a clean and tidy, yet boring place to go, not very different from mot of Japan

Malaysia sounds better, but somewhat concerned by the recent aviation troubles there

@alex is your man, he's in Cambodia so must have been to Thailand

definitely

in fact I've never been to any part of Asia except Japan and mountains of eastern China

@Batman Djokovic is playing Wawrinka in the Aussie Open at the moment, might that help you sleep?

what is Wawrinka?

@Rilakkuma you should explore! You may not be there forever

you mean, who is Wawrinka

oh tennis

sharapova and stuff

or sharapova was not tennis? anyway.

i think im starting to get sleepy. might pop some benadryl and see if that lets me sleep

benadryl is antihistamine...

Diphenhydramine is also a sleeping aid

maybe just some red burgundian?

definitely no the best sleeping aid

but it is not hard to get sleepy after it

I drink hardly any wine these days...

Mrs PeteH does not really like red wine, so if I open a bottle a lot gets wasted

Plus, she went away to her mum's yesterday. Daughter is following her tomorrow. I should have a quiet weekend

nice!

silence is one of the most underrated things around.

yes, although there are still 2 cats and 4 chickens about the place!

cats and chickens do not insist on talking with you. Very polite animals!

how do they get around by the way?

are not chickens afraid of cats?

one of the cats (the older boy) takes no interest. The younger girl wil stalk them, however they are bigger than the cat so although she spooks them, she cannot harm them

The chickens will peck her if they feel threatened, that can be quite painful. It hurts my hand when I feed them, if they peck me

I gave up on the tennis and have now decamped to the bedroom

*get along

I wish. The chickens are fine, the cats a diofferent matter

recently our hermit crab died, failed with shedding

they are surprisingly finicky pets to keep

however in the natural environment they live almost as long as humans

and die mostly of unnatural reasons

they are not the underwater crabs, but the cloest relatives of Australian coconut crabs

those who climb onto palm trees and pick coconuts

most of them are quite agressive and don't get along very well, however in Japan most crabs are of the colourful sort - they have magenta coloured caparace

very peaceful

sorry @Rilakkuma got caught up looking at daughter's new computer. Still haven't got to the bottom of it, and it is majorly frustrating because everything is happening so slowly. I'm going to settle for getting all the Windows Updates on it then having another go...

I think it got switched off during an update, and I've managed to recover it from that.

seems easier to just re-install windows

oh don't....

@Rilakkuma I thought hermit crabs lived in shells? I mean, other crustaceans' shells? And do you speak hebrew?

Hi @PeteH, sorry was little away for dinner and stuff. Hermit crabs live in whatever they find suitable, but mostly they are mollusk shells

this is an example of colored hermit

they also live in the shells of passion fruits, just garbage and anything really

and hebrew: actually tried to learn it, but need some more motivation and speaking practice.

my current company do not have a site in Israel, like previous one, so not much chance to practice. Still, there are few friends back in Israel.

wow, and you had one as a pet? cool.

@PeteH yep, they live on the islands south of Tokyo and during the summer it is pretty common to find them in the sand when they hide from the sunlight. Sometimes they are huge, sometimes sitting inside funny containers. Plenty of fun for kids!

also, islanders find out where sea turtles hide their eggs and put markings into the sand so that people don't walk around too much.

When turtles start hatching that's another megaevent for island's kids and also great warrant of safety for newly born turtles, because birds are afraid of people standing around, otherwise they eat most of the turtles.

there are not so many places on the Earth where sea turtles can hatch safely and increase their population